In Paradise, it is said, the rivers run golden with beer.
Fields of bright green hops bow and sway with the gentle breezes. The inhabitants hoist their steins high, steins that are miraculously ever-filled with ale. Little trays of peanuts and pretzels waft by on clouds.
And the food? Much of the food is made with beer, too.
But cooking with beer is not something that the rest of us _ those who live in the Paradise suburbs and beyond _ do very often. The reason is simple: Beer is generally bitter.
But there are plenty of ways to work with this bitterness, or work around it, to add a startling amount of depth to a meal, and nearly endless variations of flavor. By using a few simple tricks, you can negate the bitterness and coax the beer to blend harmoniously with the dish.
You can even make beer ice cream.
Perhaps the most common method of cooking with beer and exploring new horizons of taste is to simmer tough pieces of meat gently in it for a long time.
Stews and braises slowly cook off the bitterness while retaining the essential flavor of the beer. At the same time, much like wine, it also enhances the more appealing aspects the meat.
The best-known example of a beer stew is Carbonnades a la Flamande, which was brought to this country almost single-handedly by Julia Child. It is a beef stew, heady with onions and the floral scent of Belgian beer. For many Americans it represented the first time they saw that beer, when treated in a specific way, can almost become sweet.
It is such a standard dish, and so well known, that I chose not to make it. But I made something similar, Old-Style Chunky Beef and Beer Stew With Onions, Peppers and Tomatoes.
Granted, the name is not the best. But the dish itself is sublime, a subtle mixture of thoughtfully prepared ingredients that blend irresistibly into a vibrant whole.
It has beef, obviously, cubes of chuck, that are simmered in a dark beer. The onions, peppers and tomatoes listed in the title add more sweetness than bite, with a single tablespoon of brown sugar to fully overcome the lingering bitterness. The other ingredients _ thyme, bay leaves, cloves, garlic _ only add their aromatic magic.
Next, I used beer to make a braise. A braise is very much like a stew, except the meat is not entirely submerged in the liquid; the beer only goes partly up the side of the meat.
In this case, the meat was turkey and the dish was Beer-Braised Turkey Tacos. The beer was Negra Modelo, a dark brew from Mexico.
You begin with dark meat, both for flavor and its ability to stand up to braising. Turkey drumsticks or thighs (I used drumsticks) are browned and then cooked in a mixture of beer, water, onions, garlic, oregano and tomato.
Three extra ingredients make all the difference: a hot jalapeno pepper, a mild and flavorful ancho pepper (it's the dried version of a poblano) and a stick of cinnamon. The peppers and cinnamon create a warmth, rather than a heat, that suffuses the meat and sauce and brings it all to life.
Be sure to serve it on corn tortillas. The corn is a perfect foil for the still-assertive flavor of turkey that has been tempered by its extraordinary sauce.
Next, I made a loaf of bread. Bread is an obvious example of cooking with beer because, when you think about it, beer is basically just liquid bread.
I have made beer bread several different ways in the past, but my favorite is the way they used to make it at the famous Berghoff restaurant in Chicago. Depending on the type of beer or ale you use, you can make the beer flavor of the bread strong or mild, according to your taste.
My taste is for it to be mild. I like a hint of beeriness to the bread, not an overwhelming dose, so I used a Pilsner in my version. Stronger ales lead to a loaf that tastes like chewy beer, not beer-kissed bread.
Either way, it is phenomenal toasted or just with butter. It makes a great bread for meat sandwiches, too. But jam? You're better off spreading that on a different loaf of bread.
I could not end my adventures in beer-based cooking without dessert. I made Guinness Ice Cream with Chocolate-Covered Pretzels.
Some ice cream parlors I could name serve Guinness ice cream that does not actually have any Guinness in it. They simply make a caramel flavor and slap the Guinness name on it to cash in on the cachet.
But true Guinness ice cream is made with actual Guinness stout. And it tastes like it; you get a definite sense of ice cream that has been made with Guinness. And for all the descriptions of Guinness being creamy, it still is a little bit bitter.
It is a pleasant ice cream, but not much more than that _ until you add the chocolate-covered pretzels. The salt, the crunch, the sweetness of the chocolate, these all take the Guinness ice cream into the stratosphere.
It's one of those rare, perfect combinations. But then, beer always did go well with pretzels.
